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“Git Them Translated” TRANSLATING the CHARACTERS on the GOLD PLATES

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“Git Them Translated” TRANSLATING the CHARACTERS on the GOLD PLATES 4 “GIT THEM TRANSLATED” TRANSLATING THE CHARACTERS ON THE GOLD PLATES MICHAEL HUBBARD MACKAY OSEPH Smith declared that he translated the Book of Mormon “by the gift and power of God.”1 His friends and family supported Jhis declaration by explaining that he was utterly incapable of translating “reformed Egyptian” or any other language. They also explained that he lacked the ability that would have been neces- sary to produce the text of the Book of Mormon creatively. Joseph’s friends’ and family’s accounts emphasized God’s hand in the process and described the translation in miraculous terms.2 Yet it appears that Joseph attempted a secular translation for at least part of the translation process. Focusing on the first six months after Joseph Smith reportedly obtained the gold plates, records left by Joseph’s family and friends demonstrate that he took significant steps to find someone other than himself who was able and willing to translate the characters Michael Hubbard MacKay is an assistant professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University. APPROACHING ANTIQUITY on the plates. He began by drawing numerous characters on paper, perhaps attempting to compile an alphabet or list of characters.3 As part of his efforts to produce this list or alphabet, he sent Martin Harris to New York City in search of a translator, which suggests that Joseph Smith may not have envisioned himself, at least initially, dictating the translation of the Book of Mormon simply by the power of God. Rather, Joseph Smith first instructed Harris to turn over the characters to the scrutiny of scholars of ancient languages, natural philosophy, and Native American studies. Of the potential transla- tors with whom Harris met, Samuel Mitchill was likely the one in whom Harris placed the most hope.4 This chapter sorts through the polarized historiography and mixed contemporary accounts about Harris’s visit to New York. In the process, it challenges the traditional narrative that Joseph knew from the beginning how he would translate and that he sent Martin Harris to Charles Anthon to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy. By building upon past scholarship and by taking a fresh look at well- known sources in light of new discoveries,5 it offers an alternative approach in the face of contradictory claims by both contemporary accounts and later Mormon interpretations. To proceed in this line of thought, one assumption is made: Joseph Smith was sincere in his belief that the characters he pro- duced were ancient characters. Without this assumption, the ac- count is simply about fabrication and deception, which would re- quire a complete disregard for Joseph’s personal narratives about the experience and the effects his words have had upon the Mormon community since 1828. Nonetheless, this chapter is not an attempt to uncover the reality of the gold plates or the validity of the characters Joseph produced. Instead, it focuses on unwinding the documentary record about Joseph’s early struggles surrounding the translation of the Book of Mormon beginning in late September 1827 when he claimed to have retrieved a set of gold plates.6 80 MICHAEL HUBBARD MACKAY Copying the Characters Once Joseph Smith had the plates in his possession, he indicated that he could not show them to anyone, even his friends and fam- ily.7 Though those close to him supported his plan to keep the plates hidden, local residents became hostile, insisting that if he truly pos- sessed the plates then he should display them openly.8 Under the threat of the theft and the loss of the gold plates, he locked them in a wooden box and hid them in various places on his parents’ property. According to his mother, he even took up the hearth in her house to hide them under the floor.9 Eventually, he removed them from the grasp of the Palmyrans by leaving town, hiding the plates on his wagon in a barrel of beans before he left. Conveniently, Joseph Smith’s father-in-law offered Joseph and Emma a place to stay in Harmony, Pennsylvania, far away from those who knew about the plates.10 It was there that Joseph finally had a place to proceed with his plan for the plates. When Joseph first arrived in Harmony, he evidently did not claim to know the language inscribed on the plates. Even when he retrospectively wrote about this period in his 1838 history, the angel from whom he obtained the plates had told him that they included the history of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, but did not identify the language in which they were inscribed.11 Joseph might logically have thought that they were inscribed in a Native American language, but being uneducated, he had no way of knowing for sure even after examining them.12 The Book of Mormon itself, which Joseph eventually published as the translation of the gold plates, in- cludes descriptions of its original language. However, until he had translated those passages, Joseph had to rely upon the abilities of others to identify the language.13 Joseph Smith reported that once he arrived in Harmony, he cop- ied onto paper “a considerable number” of the characters inscribed on 81 APPROACHING ANTIQUITY the plates.14 Never revealing to what extent he examined each plate, Joseph produced an unknown number of paper copies with an un- known number of characters on each page. The process for copying the characters is also unclear, though the surrounding documenta- tion indicates that he made the initial copies himself because no one else could see the plates. After creating his copies, he worked with two or three scribes to make additional paper copies.15 Emma Smith reportedly worked, as one of these scribes, with Joseph Smith’s ini- tial drafts to either duplicate or organize them on additional pieces of paper.16 During the same period, Reuben Hale, Emma’s brother, may have also helped.17 Sources describing these events, however, do not have a clear timeline, nor do they make definitive statements about the details of Reuben or Emma’s efforts to copy the characters. Apart from these earlier clues about Joseph making copies of the characters in December 1827 and possibly January of 1828, there is also record of Martin Harris assisting Joseph Smith in making ad- ditional copies in February 1828.18 Knowing that Joseph used scribes to make additional copies suggests that he was producing more than just a small sample of characters.19 Why then was he making copies? This is a difficult question to answer because Joseph’s original purpose is often lost in a sea of ac- counts given in hindsight. Only a few individuals were in Palmyra and aware of the situation when Joseph Smith first examined the gold plates. Lucy Mack Smith and Joseph Knight Sr. were the only two who left accounts about this period and could have been aware of Joseph’s original intentions.20 Though many of Joseph’s previous as- sociates and residents from Palmyra pried for information and later gave accounts about what Joseph intended to do with the gold plates, only the accounts from Joseph’s mother and Joseph Knight Sr. re- flect personal knowledge about Joseph’s early plans for how he would translate the plates. These accounts are not ideal, considering that neither Joseph Smith’s mother nor Joseph Knight were there when 82 MICHAEL HUBBARD MACKAY he made the copies in Harmony, but they were with him in Palmyra when he was making plans to create copies of the characters, and they claim that Joseph wanted to get these copies translated.21 Joseph Knight Sr. had a personal conversation with Joseph, just after Joseph had secured the plates in Lucy and Joseph Sr.’s house. Joseph Knight recalled Joseph Smith excitedly describing the plates to him, saying, “Now they are written in Caracters [sic] and I want them translated.” According to Joseph Knight’s memory, Joseph Smith recognized that he could not read the characters on the plates, and, in frustration, knowing that the angel had told him that he would translate the plates, he quickly expressed his desire to get them translated. When Knight wrote about this experience, Joseph Smith had published the Book of Mormon at least six years earlier, and he thoroughly believed that Joseph Smith was the per- son who had translated the plates. Though Knight wrote his history years later and there are potential problems with his ability to re- member the details of the event, he was in a unique situation that may have enabled him to recall Joseph Smith’s original plan. When Joseph Knight was writing he knew the outcome of the story, which included the fact that Joseph Smith eventually translated the plates himself. Because of that knowledge, Joseph Knight may have been differentiating between what Joseph Smith’s original intentions were and what eventually happened. Knight explained that once Joseph Smith had moved to Harmony, he took an additional step to have the plates translated by copying “of[f] the Caricters exactley [sic] like the ancient” so that he could send them to scholars for translation.22 Knight’s record also seems to coincide with Lucy Mack Smith’s account, which focused on Joseph Smith’s role in the translation and publication of the Book of Mormon. Lucy Smith asserted that as Joseph Smith took “some measures to accomplish the translation . he was instructed to take off a fac simile of the . characters” and by sending it to “learned men” he could acquire a “translation of 83 APPROACHING ANTIQUITY the same.”23 Though Lucy Smith focused on the secular translation of just a sample of the characters, both she and Joseph Knight Sr.
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